The announcement that the Los Angeles metropolitan area will host the 2028 Summer Olympic Games raises an interesting dilemma for the region’s tourist attractions.

In 1984, the last time they were here, Disneyland experienced some of the smallest summer time crowds in its history then, as many locals left town.

So, do you scale up for the summer of 2028 in the hope of attracting a larger share of the tourists who will come to Southern California for the games? Or do you plan to scale back that summer, figuring that the Olympics will hog all the regional tourism business for itself, scaring off any other potential visitors?

Making this question ever more interesting is the fact for theme park fans is the fact that the 2028 games will mark the third consecutive Summer Olympics to be held in a metropolis that also is home to a Disney theme park resort, following Tokyo in 2020 and Paris in 2024. That gives Disney Parks three opportunities to cash in – or scale back – in the face of Olympic competition.

Disney’s already made its choice clear for the Tokyo games. Disney’s partners at the Oriental Land Company have announced an ambitious expansion plan for the Tokyo Disney Resort, with a new “Beauty and the Beast” dark ride joining a “Big Hero 6” ride and a Broadway-style live performance theater all opening in the spring of 2020 at Tokyo Disneyland, just before the start of the Tokyo games. Tokyo DisneySea will be getting its own installation of Disney’s Soarin’ ride the year before, in 2019.

Concept art for the “Beauty and the Beast” attraction planned for Tokyo Disneyland. (Photo Courtesy, The Walt Disney Company)

Disney’s competitor Universal Studios Japan in Osaka, three hours by train from Tokyo, is not sitting out the Olympics, either. Universal has announced that it will open its widely anticipated Super Nintendo World video game-themed land in 2020, as well. All of these projects will help make Japan a wildly competitive, and attractive, destination for the world’s tourists that year.

Universal Studios’ parent company, NBCUniversal, holds the U.S. broadcast rights to the Olympics, giving Universal’s theme parks an opportunity for official tie-ins to the games that Disney, owner of rivals ABC and ESPN, will lack.

The Los Angeles Olympic bid calls for the media center for the 2028 games to be built at Universal Studios Hollywood, becoming a movie soundstage after the games. That might complicate Universal’s decision whether to build a new attraction at its Hollywood theme park that summer, given the inevitable congestion that hosting the media center will bring to the site.

Universal does not have a theme park in Europe – at least not yet – so the 2024 games in Paris shouldn’t raise any development issues for Universal. But what will Disney do in 2024 and beyond?

Concept art for the exterior of the “Beauty and the Beast” attraction planned for Tokyo Disneyland. (Photo Courtesy, The Walt Disney Company)

At the D23 Expo in Anaheim last month, Disney outlined its expansion plans for its theme parks around the world. But almost all those projects are planned for completion by 2022.

Could Disney decide to build Star Wars and Marvel lands for its Disneyland Paris Resort to open in time for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics? Those lands would be the two most logical choices for any future expansion projects at the Paris resort, and the timing could be right, too, as Disney completes its U.S. Star Wars lands in 2019.

Looking all the way ahead to 2028 is tough. But by the time the Los Angeles games arrive, Disney will have its experiences in Tokyo and Paris to help guide its response to the games in Southern California. Orange County will host a few Olympic venues in L.A.’s current plans for the games. But volleyball at the Honda Center, and maybe baseball preliminaries at Angel Stadium, won’t crowd out anyone from visiting the Disneyland Resort or Knott’s Berry Farm. In fact, Orange County’s theme parks – and their many adjacent hotel rooms – might provide a welcome retreat for Los Angeles County residents looking to get away from the major Olympic venues during the games.

One way or another, we should expect all the local theme parks to find some way to climb upon the Olympic hype train that summer. Because if there is one thing that theme parks are world champions at, it’s going for, and getting, their gold.

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